Friday, January 11, 2008

Attack of the Churro

Multi-tasking was not at its finest today, as I attempted to carry two churros and a carseat holding Darcey in from the car at the same time. It just didn't seem like a prudent use of my time to have to make a whole second trip just for two churros. I mean, two churros? I may not be Hanz and Franz, but certainly I can handle a baby and two churros!

Apparently, no I can't.

The problem was that Darcey's carseat handle was not in its full, upright position, so I was carrying her at an angle, trusting that the $1 per hour that the Chinese laborer was paid was a worthwhile incentive to do a good job at assembling the seat belt. I don't actually trust that, so I was holding the carseat handle with one hand, and the bottom of the seat with the other. If you are keeping score at home, that leaves exactly no hands for the churros, which weren't even for me. They were for Brad and Noah who were on their way home from school and when Brad found out that we had gotten churros at Costco without him, he'd get so far bent out of shape we could use him as a hanger. A surly hanger at that.

So the churros, which I had grabbed before realizing the precarious carseat situation, were being squeezed by the hand that was holding the handle. Darcey lay there in her seat, gazing up beatifically as a shower of cinnamon and suger dusted her face with every step. She's a trooper, she didn't even flinch. But with each jarring step, a little more shook loose, until tiny churro chunks were bonking her on the forehead. I'm watching the hail of churro come down on my baby, but I was only a few feet away from the counter, so I forged ahead.

On my last step, though, the churro broke in half and fell straight down, whacking Darcey right in the eye. I don't know if you've ever been churroed, but I can't imagine it feels good. (I've never been churroed myself, but I have been hamburgered, or more appropriately, my car has been hamburgered. I was visiting a friend at her apartment and when I came out, someone had taken a whole hamburger and smeared it across the side of my car. The bun was still sticking to the window, and there was ketchup everywhere. I will take being hamburgered over being churroed anyday.)

Darcey didn't cry until I took the churro away from her. I think she had been staring up at the churro, willing it to break and fall down so she could eat it. This girl will eat, or attempt to eat, anything. So the churro falling on her face was probably cause for great joy and celebration! Until I took it away, her horribly mean mother who never lets her have what she wants even though the boys all get churros.

Darcey cheered right up, though, when she realized that her face was covered in cinnamon and sugar. She licked her lips over and over, trying to lick up some of that deep fried goodness. Then I had to go and ruin that, too, by taking her out of her seat and brushing her off. I wouldn't have considered cinnamon or sugar, both normally dry ingredients, to be so sticky, but dust a 7 month old baby in it and watch out - you've got a substance that should be marketed to NASA to glue on those tiles they are always having trouble with.

And the stuff was everywhere. I mean everywhere. Babies are well known for their crevices and folds of skin that trap food and other debris, and this is no different. I lifted up her head, and there was a veritable storehouse of cinnamon all in her neck. I tipped her forward, and there was cinnamon sugar in her hair.

Which is all to say, if Darcey wasn't sweet before, she sure is now. She smells fantastic and probably tastes good, too, although we're just going to leave that untested. When I gave Brad the broken churro, he started to look disappointed that his was broken, until I told him that it had fallen onto Darcey's face, at which point it was deemed a better churro than Noah's whole one, because it had a story behind it.

In my family when we were kids, when a kid did something stupid, my parents would ask, "Is this the kid that we dropped on their head?" The question was never, "Is that the kid we dropped a churro on?" But what a great question that would be. And in our family, we have the answer.